This is one of the primary reasons I’ve been learning MLCad. I love building terrain with Lego, but if it’s going to be taken apart again I want a permanent record of what I’ve built. The advantage of using MLCad is of course I can share my creations with the growing Mobile Frame Zero community. I spent an hour and captured this building I built as an MLCAD plan. You can download it by clicking the image to the right.

I’ll be posting more terrain and MLCAD plans as I get them built. Feel free to use them for your Lego constructions. If they see some play on your table, or blog, or you modify them into something more interesting I’d love to hear about it, and links back here are also welcomed!

Related posts:

1. Mobile Frame Zero Stations
2. Wargame: Mobile Frame Zero
3. Mobile Frame Zero Funded

However each team of frames needs 2 – 3 ‘stations’ to battle over. You’re awarded victory points depending on both the condition of your frames, and the number of stations you control. Stations are apparently treated as indestructable in MFZ, which is unlike normal terrain. Keeping that in mind I’ve created a small set of ‘communication’ stations that have a minimal footprint on the table, and hopefully don’t look like they provide any sort of useful cover.

I’m also working to master MLCad, which is an open source alternate to Lego’s official ‘Lego Digital Designer’. As MLCad doesn’t have the ‘snap to’ logic that LDD has, it’s a little more flexible in terms of creating the crazy Lego joins that can be common in Lego robots at this scale. MLCad is also noticeably faster than the slicker looking LDD, at least on my crappy old P4. I plan to capture anything of interest I build in MLCad files if I can. Here’s a sample station as an MLCad file.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Frame Zero Buildings
2. Mobile Frame Zero Funded
3. Wargame: Mobile Frame Zero

Mobile Frame Zero was at Pax East too, and attendees there apparently enjoyed the game system as it was easy to pick up, but tactically deep enough for hard core war gamers. There’s also a strategic element in terms of the size and composition of your team of frames. As the MFZ authors secured plenty of funding (916% of what they were asking) we may also see some expansions to the MFZ rule set as well, possibly in the form of a larger scale space battles rule set. That’d be great because it’ll allow even more Lego building options.

I’m furiously building Lego creations for a Mobile Frame Zero table (the images are my two latest builds) and spending far too much money on Bricklink buying exotic bricks, both for Frames as well as sundry terrain pieces like vehicles, barriers and all plant life. I’m trying to put together two teams of 4-5 Frames each which means I can play Mobile Frame Zero with my eight year old son, as well as my small group of gaming buddies. I’ve also been getting no figure painting done either, I’ve just been playing with building all sorts of robots and terrain from Lego. Frankly it’s great fun and the fact Lego gives you instant, colourful and attractive game pieces means I’m looking forward to trying the rule set out.

Related posts:

1. Mobile Frame Zero Buildings
2. Wargame: Mobile Frame Zero
3. Mobile Frame Zero Stations

I figure a fair number of visitors to this blog fall into one or more of those categories, which is why I’m mentioning this slightly off-topic Kickstarter project I recently stumbled across: Mobile Frame Zero – Rapid Attack.

It’s a war game featuring battling robots built from micro Lego pieces which is roughly a month from closing on Kickstarter at the time of this post. It’s already funded too. I can’t say I’ve played the game, or know anything about it other than the Kickstarter description and that it involves making cool micro scale robots from Lego parts. However their introduction video features some happy war gamers so the system can’t be totally awful. It’s also an update of an earlier game called ‘Mechaton’ by one of the authors for Mobile Frame Zero, which Board Game Geek knows about and ranks fairly highly at 7.53 (out of 10). The other designers seem to have some game design pedigree behind them too. At any rate I took the plunge and spent a whole $10US for the lowest funding bracket. Looking forward to getting that PDF when it’s done!

To get you inspired, there’s a Flickr group which includes some great micro Lego robots. If you’re after some of the smaller Lego parts you’ll need to build these robots BrickLink is a great place to find a local reseller of single Lego parts. They even have New Zealand and Australian resellers on there!

Related posts:

1. Mobile Frame Zero Funded
2. Mobile Frame Zero Stations
3. Mobile Frame Zero Buildings

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a knee jerk reaction: I still have a large collection of Games Workshop paints and have painted with them for at least 15 years, but I’ve also endured 15 years of increasing prices, meaningless package and colour range changes and have regularly discarded dried out, useless paints. I feel it’s probably time for a change. Unfortunately I live in New Zealand, so my options from local retailers have been limited to the Flames of War military range of Vallejo Colours. These are excellent paints of course, but are unsuitable for painting Fantasy or Sci-fi figures because of the small range of drab military colours.

Vallejo Game Colours

Maelstrom Games UK have an online webstore I’ve used several times in the past for figure purchases. They also carry a wide range of hobby products including the full Vallejo Game Colour paint line. Recently they had a hobby promotion on the site, so I picked up a Vallejo 16 Colour ‘Advanced Game Colour’ set, with an extra bronze metal paint. As Maelstrom have free delivery, this set cost me a total of $46nzd (excluding the additional bronze metal). That’s $2.80nzd per 17ml dropper bottle of acrylic paint. Compare that to the $7nzd locally for a 12ml pottle of Games Workshop paint from a local hobby store. That’s less than half price for more paint.

This set arrived earlier this week and I have to say Vallejo paints are just as good as everybody says they are. The pigment depth is astounding (I already knew that from the FOW lines) and the Game Colour range is absolutely chock full of vibrant, rich colours for Fantasy and Sci-Fi figure painting. For the first time in several years I find myself wanting to paint figures because it’s a joy to simply put a few drops of paint on a scrap of plastic and paint with lovely solid colours. Using Games Workshop paints in comparison is an exercise in frustration. The paints have very poor coverage in several colours (many of the yellows and several of the reds) and the pottles are awful to use, as well as being very prone to drying out. I tidied up my paint station when the Vallejo colours arrived and threw out no less than nineteen dried out GW paint pottles, most of which were over half full. That’s $133nzd of paint wasted thanks to awful packaging, or let’s say $66nzd since they were half full. I’m confident my Vallejo Game Colour dropper bottles will last for years, particularly since I already have a set of Vallejo military colours that have been on my paint station for years already.

I will never purchase Games Workshop paints again, instead I will concentrate on replacing old GW colours as I run out (or the bloody things dry up) with new Vallejo Game Colour paints. If you’re using GW paints today you are basically wasting your money unless you rapidly consume whole pottles of colour.

Army Painter Warpaints

Another option which has popped up locally is Army Painter Warpaints. Slave To Painting sell the Army Painter Starter kits locally in New Zealand. I haven’t tried this paint line, but read a very interesting Warpaint review from the “Tale of Painters” blog recently, which recommends them as a good paints as well. I believe the gentleman that runs Slave to Painting has plans to extend the range and types of paint he sells, so it’ll be worth keeping an eye on the site in the future.

In summary, if you’re still using Games Workshop paints for your Fantasy or Sci-Fi figures, do yourself a favour and try something else! Save yourself some money, and remember how much fun painting figures used to be…

Related posts:

1. Review: Cheaper than Games Workshop Skull White Primer
2. Review: Wings of War – Famous Aces
3. Review: Black Scorpion Tombstone Miniatures

I ordered a set of the micro markers with the white resin base, and a set of mini markers with the blue resin base for 20 markers in total. They were promptly shipped from Litko and arrived in my letterbox in good time. You have to assemble them yourself, which involves wedging the ‘splash’ marker into the base that holds it. This was fairly painless, although I damaged one of the clear micro bases by applying a little too much force during assembly, so just go easy on them.

We’ve played several games now using these as damage markers and I think the general consensus is they’re more visually appealing than dull cardboard tokens. It was a good idea to get a mix of marker types as we’ve started using the larger blue markers to represent two hits (typically awarded by exceeding the Critical Rating of a vessel), while the white markers represent one hit. This means there’s less markers to drag around with each vessel and conserves them for play, although we’ve not run out of markers yet during our 800pts per side games. The markers are also small enough that they can be balanced on top of larger Dystopian War vessels.

If you’re playing Dystopian Wars I’d recommend picking up some of these cheap and cheerful resin splash markers for your table. The price is right and they definitely improve the look of a game in progress.

Related posts:

1. Dystopian Wars: Covenant of Antarctica Ships
2. Dystopian Wars: Covenant of Antarctica Escorts

Here’s the first three escorts painted and varnished with the Army Painter Super Matt Varnish I reviewed last year. They were painted in similar colours to the Diogenes class frigates I’ve already painted, but with more grey and less of the icy blue. The smoke stacks were painted in Brazen Brass, highlighted with Shining Gold and then touched over with Dark Flesh wash. I think these colours provide a nice warm contrast to the cold scheme on the rest of the ship and I’ll be using the same scheme on my Cruisers and Battleships.

Related posts:

1. Dystopian Wars: Covenant of Antarctica Ships
2. Review: Litko Splash Markers for Dystopian Wars

The Product:

This post is a brief review of the Army Painter ‘Matt Varnish Spray’ can. This is a 400ml can of varnish with a large, wide spraying nozzle. It’s part of the Army Painter line of products and is designed to be used with figures painted with their ‘Quickshade’ dipping tins. Slavetopainting.co.nz were kind enough to supply a sample can for this review and they sell it for $14.90nzd a can.

How Matt is “Super Matt”?

A good matt spray varnish can be hard to come by if you’re a New Zealand war gamer. For several years most of us have been using the expensive, 150ml spray cans of ‘Moana’ matt artist’s varnish which frankly is most ‘matt’ spray varnish I’ve ever encountered. However Moana was discontinued in New Zealand this year, leaving people frantically buying up the remaining stocks (one local war gamer bought the last fourteen cans in store) and looking for a replacement in the local market. So the arrival of Slavetopainting.co.nz seems quite timely.

I’ve spent the last couple of nights varnishing a variety of dipped figures in the garage with the Army Painter can and have to say it compares very favourably to Moana matt varnish. I can distinguish no difference between the ‘mattness’ of my older figures varnished with Moana and the handful of figures I’ve varnished with Army Painter “Super Matt”. I took a bunch of photos to try and get a side by side comparison of Moana and Army Painter varnished figures but in the end haven’t included them here because the results are identical. I’ll say that again for clarity:

Army Painter Super Matt spray varnish is as good as Moana Matt Varnish in terms of finish.

That should be a big deal to any New Zealand war gamers because it means we still have access to an excellent matt varnish to use on our painted figures. The 400ml can also means you’ll also have a generous amount of varnish to hand, however be aware the nozzle produces a fairly wide spray so you should probably varnish groups of figures rather than individuals to prevent wastage. Army Painter Super Matt covers well and dries quickly with no unpleasant odour and the finished varnish feels as durable as the other spray varnish products I’ve used.

Value for Money?

Army Painter Super Matt spray is available from Slavetopainting.co.nz at $14.90 for a 400ml can. This is superb value compared to the discontinued Moana 150ml can selling for around $12NZ. It is also excellent value compared to the Games Workshop Citadel Matt Spray which is also a 400ml can however sells for almost twice the price.

In Conclusion

I’ll be using Army Painter Super Matt varnish on my war gaming collection from now on and have no problem recommending it to New Zealand war gamers. You should definitely pick up a can if your Moana stash is running low, or you don’t feel like paying twice the price for varnish from your local Games Workshop store.

I haven’t used Army Painter products in the past myself because the cost was prohibitive by the time exchange rates and international shipping were added. I resorted to mixing my own dips instead. However now there’s a local supplier for Army Painter products with reasonable prices I may have to give them a crack. I’m also particularly interested to see how matt the Army Paint matt varnish is, considering Moana varnish is no longer being produced locally.

Slave to painting also carry a nice line of priming and basing products which also look intriguing, and are certainly considerably cheaper than Games Workshop’s equivalent products.

I ended up with the new ‘Covenant of Antarctica’ forces, ordered from Maelstrom Games and have started painting the contents of that box in a fairly typical ‘winter sea’ splinter scheme. Here’s a slightly murky shot of the first three squadrons of Diogenes class frigates. Just in case I forget, these ships have been primed with 3M Acid Etch, painted with a mix of GW paints and Vallejo Flames of War military colours. Then ink washed with a mix of india ink and Windsor & Newton blue ink and over-painted again with lightened tones thinned with acrylic thinner. They’ve been varnished with the now unavailable Moana Matt Varnish.

The Dystopian Wars ships seem universally excellent. The ships are one-sided resin casts of what appears to be rapid-prototyped 3D models. The level of detail is simply amazing on the ships, so I can only assume Spartan Games are using some expensive laser sintered rapid prototype service. For bombers and other large two-sided flyers the models are cast in pewter and lack the same crispness and level of detail as the resin ships which is a bit of a pity. They’re still passable models, but they’re definitely less defined in terms of surface details like tiny 0.2mm rivets etc.

We’re all painting up our forces at the moment and when you consider a Dystopian Wars naval box force consists of one capital ship, three medium ships, 9 small frigates, two large bombers and 10 tiny flyer tokens it is actually possible we’ll be playing with fully painted forces!

Related posts:

1. Dystopian Wars: Covenant of Antarctica Escorts
2. Review: Litko Splash Markers for Dystopian Wars

So I asked on our forum if anybody had a decent replacement option and Dustan chipped in with a suggestion. He’s using an automotive primer for his figures these days: 3M’s ‘Etch Primer’ which comes in a 400g can (see the photo). I nipped down to the local Super Cheap Auto and picked up a can for the low price of $19 NZD.

I’ve just finished priming my first batch of figures with it and it works just fine. I’ve finally primed my pewter 15mm Corvus Belli Romans as well as a box of resin Covenant of Antarctica ships for Dystopian Wars. I’ve noticed the spray coverage isn’t as fine as the Skull White can, but I’m only dusting figures and models with the primer, rather than trying to get solid coverage. A dusting of 3M’s etch primer doesn’t obscure any detail that I noticed and adheres well to plastic and pewter. It does adhere to resin, but not quite as strongly (you can scrape it off with a fingernail), but that’s fine as I’ll be over-painting it with several coats of acrylic paints. The primer has no negative effect on plastic or resin that I can detect and Vallejo and GW paints go over the primer coat just fine as well.

So if you’re sick of paying a ‘GW’ tax on their Skull White primer, try this product instead. It is just over a third cheaper, and you get more than an extra third of paint in the can as well. Thanks for the tip Dustan!

Related posts:

1. Review: Alternatives to Games Workshop Paints

My order arrived last week and I was pleasantly surprised how much fun mold #320 is to cast and build with. It’s a pretty hungry mold plaster-wise, but a single cast gets you enough bits and pieces of pipe to make an interesting 6″ linear barrier for pretty much any 28mm scale war game you can think of. The pipe sections obviously work very well for sci-fi or modern terrain, but with the right brassy paint job a few pieces could probably be added to the side of a fantasy building for some kind of brewery or mad alchemist’s laboratory.

After casting the mold a couple of times I couldn’t resist playing with the parts and dug out a pre-cut and bevelled 3mm MDF base I had kicking around. I cut and bevelled a whole bunch of random organic shapes years ago and have been working my way through the stack ever since. It’s a great time saver for just cracking into a random terrain piece when you feel like it.

This bit of Necromunda/40k/Pulp terrain is made from just two casts of mold #320, a piece of cut chicken wire, some corrugated cardboard and based with a mix of kitty little and model railway ballast. The chicken wire and cardboard was used to build that little shack over a vertical tap piece which is obscured in the photos, but you can see in the unpainted terrain.

The pipes were painted with grey latex house paint and then weathered with the Vegemite technique before airbrushing them red with hobby paints and then over-painting them with my home-made dipping varnish. The base is just dry brushed with a couple of layers of dirty brown latex house paint as well. Things were left pretty generic as I plan to use this terrain for Pulp gaming, and possibly Necromunda or 40k terrain if I ever get around to playing those systems again. I’ve included a couple of Games Workshop Imperial Guard Cadians just for scale indication.

Create Details

Early 20th century buildings typically include a lot of surface detail they’re built from brick with added stucco or concrete rendered details over the top. Building details are fairly repeatative so I usually create a few simple masters for pillars and panels, and then cast them in resin to add to the basic flat wall described in the previous post.

The masters for these building details are small and constructed from various thicknesses of plastic card, super glue and green stuff. You should be able to create these detail pieces in an evening of sculpting. The photo shows the only masters I created for this second facade, apart from my generic 15mm windows. There’s a basic pillar which is made from plastic card strips, green stuff and some resin details I cut off an earlier pillar I made for my first 15mm facade. There’s also a left and right decorative bracket which adds to the roofline. Again this is constructed from the swirl piece cut from an earlier pillar, a scrap of plastic card and some green stuff.

Mold and Cast Details

Once these details are mastered I mold them, using the technique I’ve discussed in another tutorial and cast them in resin enough times to cover the facade. Be aware that casting in resin with some molding rubbers tends to destroy the mold as it leaches silicone from the rubber, eventually making it brittle and your mold prone to tearing and losing detail. That’s ok though because for this facade I only needed around 10 casts of the pillar.

You can see the RTV rubber mold in the photo as well. For resin molding I typically dust the entire mold with an un-scented baby talcum powder which acts as a mold release for the set resin pieces. The talcum powder will also help the resin flow into small details and corners. I use a 1:1 clear mix resin product from TopMark here in New Zealand. For European and US visitors I’m sure you can find an equivalent resin product from a local supplier. I mix the resin and pour it into the mold, and use a toothpick to lift and air bubbles trapped in corners before the resin starts to cure and turn opaque. The mold is then covered with an old CD jewel case cover, which has also been liberally dusted with baby talcum powder. This is because you want the detail casts to have a flat back, but you don’t want them to stick to the CD cover.

Cast enough resin details, clean them up with some light triming and filing and you can start applying them to the basic wall. It’s often worth casting a few extra parts and storing them for later re-molding (if your original mold has perished from the resin casting), or for use in creating new master pieces.

Applying Details

Here’s the finished master for the 15mm facade. You can see I’ve applied a set of the cast resin pillars and added the roof bracket details as well. Two resin pillars were cut down to make the smaller pillars flanking the top window. The rest of the building detailing has been added using a variety of thicknesses of plastic card cut into strips. This is where the faded pen guide lines the basic wall picked during casting come in handy to keep everything fairly straight. It’s worth taking the time to make sure everything is straight because you want to cast a set of these. For example several of the pillars were glued down and then pried up and reseated to get them straight.

Unfortunately I can see several parts of this facade that are crooked, can you spot them? The bottom left pillar is crooked, the middle row far left window isn’t straight and some of the plastic card trim has a noticeable bend in it. However chances are you won’t notice these issues once the buildings are on the gaming table and you’re standing 2-3 feet away from them.

Also take some time to make sure everything is well sealed. You can see above I’ve used a grey epoxy resin to seal the tops and bottoms of the resin pillars against the plastic card strips. I’ve also brushed on a water based DIY gap filler product to seal the gaps around the resin window frames and seat them into the basic wall more smoothly. This step is important because you want to get a clean mold of the whole facade, and having gaps between parts will allow the RTV to sneak behind details, leaving you with some fiddly mold trimming to do.

In the final post, I’ll cover molding, casting and creating terrain with the complete 15mm facade.

Related posts:

1. Sculpting a 15mm Building I – Tutorial
2. Tutorial: Cheap Flexible 15mm Roads

I’ve created a couple of 15mm building facades for European style 19th century buildings for war games like Flames of War. The first of which you see to the left. I’ve just completed the second after a three year gap so thought I’d document the process here for future reference.

Inspiration

The first step is to find a building that you want to render in 15mm scale. There’s plenty of World War II photos on the internet and a Google image search will find you a bunch. Unfortunately these are typically either aerial reconnaissance photos taken from great height, or street level photos taken after terrible bombing has occurred. At any rate they typically lack enough detail to work from. I just wandered around my local city (Auckland, NZ) looking for buildings that were built in the early 1900′s that I thought wouldn’t look out of place in a European city, or on a WWII war gaming table. My second 15mm facade was inspired by the building to the right. The roof line in particular looked European to me.

The Basic Wall

I’ve created both the facades by starting with a plain 5mm thick wall of cast Ultracal 30 (a hard plaster) with voids for the doors and windows. Once I have a basic wall I’m happy with I add details with resin cast parts and green stuff patching.

So here’s the basic wall mold for my second facade. This has been created from a piece of white plastic which you can see has been measured up for 15mm scale high floors and gridded to indicate placement of the doors and windows. The important thing to remember here is that this mold is reversed. That’s because you want the smooth, face down side to become the outer facing surface on your final basic wall. The walls of the mold are build from cut plastic card and are held in place and sealed with masking tape. You can see a piece of foam board has been cut to act as a former for the curved roof detail. Cut foam board pieces have been glued to the backing plastic where the doors and window voids need to be.

Ultracal 30 is then mixed and poured carefully into this simple mold, making sure we go no thicker than the 5mm foam card door and window inserts. Once the whole mess has set you should be able to pop the backing plastic off the basic wall, push out the foam card voids and tidy it all up with some careful filing.

Here’s the de-molded basic wall, which has had the foam card spacers removed. You can see a bit of the foam card left around the large bottom window. Notice this is the face down side of the mold, and you can see where the Ultracal 30 has lifted the penned in grid lines from the mold above. That’s actually kind of handy as they can also act as guides while you’re apply details.

I’ve forced in some custom resin windows I’ve sculpted as well, unfortunately breaking the basic wall in half in the process. That’s why you can see a crack running across the bottom of each window pillar. Doesn’t look like much at the moment does it? That’s because it needs some details!

The next post I’ll cover sculpting, casting and applying resin details to the master.

Related posts:

1. Sculpting a 15mm Building II – Tutorial
2. Tutorial: Cheap Flexible 15mm Roads